NHS at centre of storm: Brexit Means … podcast

Read more

In total, 45% of respondents to the BMA survey said they were thinking about leaving Britain following the result of the EU referendum in June 2016 – three percentage points more than when the BMA ran a similar poll in February – while a further 29% were unsure whether they would go.

Among those who were considering going elsewhere 39% – or 18% of the whole sample – have already made plans to leave. The 12,000 doctors from the EEA (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) represent 7.7% of the NHS’s medical workforce.

Some of those leaving have been offered jobs abroad, while others are applying for posts overseas. Some have begun the process of seeking citizenship elsewhere, while others are having their qualifications validated so they can work in another country, the BMA said.

Q&A

What was wrong with the claim that the UK sends the EU £350m a week?

The claim that Britain “sends the EU £350m a week” is wrong because:

The rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher is removed before anything is paid ​​to Brussels. In 2014, this meant Britain actually “sent” £276m a week to Brussels; in 2016, the figure was £252m.

Slightly less than half that sum – the money that Britain does send to the EU – either comes back to the UK to be spent mainly on agriculture, regional aid, research and community projects, or gets counted towards ​the country’s international aid target.

Regardless of how much the UK “saves” by leaving the EU, the claim that a future government would be able to spend it on the NHS is highly misleading because:

It assumes the government would choose to spend on the NHS the money it currently gets back from the EU (£115m a week in 2014), thus cutting f​unding for​ agriculture, regional development and research by that amount.

It assumes​ the UK economy will not be adversely affected by Brexit, which many economists doubt.

Was this helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

“That so many EU doctors are actively planning to leave the UK is a cause for real concern. Many have dedicated years of service to the NHS and medical research in the UK, and without them our health service would not be able to cope,” said Dr Andrew Dearden, the BMA’s treasurer.

The Labour MP Darren Jones, a supporter of the pro-EU Open Britain campaign, said: “The British people were told last year that Brexit would boost the NHS by £350m a week. Now the evidence is piling up that it will break it instead.

“We all depend on the brilliant work done by doctors, nurses and other staff who come from the EU. There is no chance that we could replace their expertise if they continue to leave the UK.”

But the Department of Health said that figures released last week by the General Medical Council, showing a slight year-on-year rise in 2016-17 in the number of EEA doctors joining its medical register, showed the BMA’s findings were inaccurate.

“This survey does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, there are actually more EU doctors working in the NHS since the EU referendum, more EU graduates joining the UK medical register and 3,193 more EU nationals working in the NHS overall,” a spokesperson said.